Click the links to read sample chapters.

For teen and young adult readers who enjoy the Circle C Milestones, here’s a look at why I (Susan Marlow) decided to bring these four books back and highlight them on my website. Colleen L. Reece is the original author. She always wrote inspirational books for young and old. Her books are full of faith, adventure, Scripture, and dependence on God, along with a wholesome romance element. One woman wrote, “Thank you for writing books that I not only love but I can also hand to my twelve-going-on-eighteen-year-old-granddaughter without a qualm.”

How did the Diamond S Chronicles (originally titled Romance Quartet) come about? You might be surprised to learn this story, and what author Susan K. Marlow has to do with any of it.

The Story Behind This Series

From Colleen L. Reece, 2017: Back in 2007, Susan K. Marlow, treasured friend, former student, and the author of several best-selling historical series for kids and YA had an idea for a Christian western for older readers.

I loved it. We brainstormed, and I encouraged her to submit a proposal. She reluctantly agreed (she preferred to keep writing for younger readers) and received permission to submit sample chapters and a synopsis. Her book proposal was eventually rejected because of too much plot and not enough romance (go figure). However, the editor said, “Without a doubt, this is one of the best-written stories I have seen in some time. You do write very well.”

I suggested co-authoring by adding the necessary romance and finishing the chapters that were as yet unwritten (and include her name on the book cover). Susan said, “No thanks.” She did not want to be known as a romance writer. Instead, she offered me the manuscript, saying, “Take it. Do what you like with it. Just don’t put my name on it.”

I did just that, and I laughed all the way to the bank when my publisher, Barbour, published not only Romance Rides the Range, but three sequels. This first book came out in 2010, from the same publisher who had initially turned it down! Friends try to figure out which chapters are “hers, mine, or ours.”

Flight to Freedom

Chapter One

Spring 1882, Saint Louis, Missouri

“It’s over, girl. Git up.” Gus Stoddard’s gruff voice crackled with impatience.

Eighteen-year-old Sarah Anderson ignored her stepfather’s command and continued to bend over the freshly dug grave. Her tears fell freely, mixing with the recent rain shower.

The April morning’s sudden cloudburst symbolized her grief. It was as if all heaven wept on Sarah’s behalf. The shower had cleared the air of the usual humidity and left the day refreshingly cool and clean. A rainbow spread its brilliant arc over her mother’s grave just as the minister read John 14:1-3, a fitting eulogy for a God-fearing woman like Virginia Anderson Stoddard.

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

The promise brought Sarah a little bit of comfort, but the reassuring words dissolved from her memory at Gus’s harsh voice. “I said git up!” The sharp kick from the man’s boot accompanied his voice. “The young’uns are hungry. You take ’em back to the house and fix ’em some dinner. I’ve got business down at the docks.”

A wave of rebellion swept through Sarah. “I want to stay here awhile.”

“It don’t matter a lick what you want. You do as I say. Now.” Gus yanked Sarah up from the mound of dirt. He spun her around so hard that her worn bonnet slipped to her shoulders, revealing a thick braid of red-gold hair circling her head. “Look at you. There’s no call to shame yourself in front of the preacher and mourners by crawling all over the grave. You’ve got mud on your Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. What would your mother think of you wallowing in the mud instead of minding your brothers and sister?”

They are no kin of mine, Sarah silently protested, knowing better than to speak her thoughts. Long experience with Gus Stoddard had taught her to hold her tongue, even when she wanted to cry out against him.

Sarah glanced through her tears at her blue-sprigged calico dress. Several large, dark splotches covered the skirt and the undersides of the long sleeves. Her hands were caked with mud from falling onto the mound of dirt that held the last remains of the dearest person she’d ever known. Oh, Mama! What will become of me now?  

She read the tombstone once more: Virginia Stoddard. 1840-1882. Nothing more. No words of endearment, no mention of the other little life that lay in the woman’s arms—the tiny baby girl who had never even been named. Engraving cost money, more money than the unfeeling man standing next to Sarah cared to pay. He certainly wouldn’t see the need to write anything other than the bare-bone facts.

Sarah looked up and blinked back tears. Most of the twenty-five or so mourners had left, leaving her alone with the man who now had complete control over her life. She gazed silently into Gus Stoddard’s face. It seemed chiseled from stone. The hard black eyes staring at her from beneath heavy brows made Sarah wonder what her gentle mother had ever seen in this man.

Perhaps Gus had been handsome at one time, with his thick, curling dark hair and solid muscular build. Sadly, whatever charms he’d used to win Virginia Anderson had quickly worn off after the marriage vows. It had been the longest three years of Sarah’s life.

“What are you staring at, Girl?” Gus demanded.

“Nothing.” Her reply, devoid of emotion, earned her a sharp smack across the cheek. She ignored the slap, as she had learned to ignore so many things from her stepfather.

“Mind your impertinence, missy,” Gus snapped. “We can’t stand around all day grieving over a dead woman. There’s work t’ be done, you hear? Now, you mind your pa and take your brothers and sister home. I’m going down to the docks. I’ve got business with Tice Edwards.”

Gus’s expression convinced Sarah he was in no mood to be trifled with. She grabbed eight-year-old Ellianna by the hand. “Come on. Let’s go home.” With her other hand, she reached for five-year-old Timmy and motioned the two older boys to follow.

Together, they headed back to the three-room cottage on the edge of town, the Stoddards’ most recent residence. It was a two-mile trek through the bustling city of Saint Louis. The humidity that had relented for a bit would soon be back in full force.

You’re not my pa! These are not my brothers and sister! Sarah gave Ellie’s hand an impatient tug. “You’re always dragging your feet, Ellie. Can’t you walk faster? Timmy doesn’t have any trouble keeping up.”

In response, the child bit Sarah’s hand.

“Ouch!” Sarah yelped. “What did you do that for?”

“You were pulling too hard,” Ellie said spitefully, glancing at the older boys walking alongside her. They grinned.

Ian, the oldest at thirteen, stopped and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I ain’t goin’ home.” He kicked a rock with one bare foot. “I’m goin’ t’ catch me some rats down by the riverboats.”

“Me too,” declared eleven-year-old Peter. He pulled back on his suspenders and let them go, grinning at the loud crack.

“Fine,” Sarah muttered. “The rest of us are going home for nice hot stew and my special biscuits. You two aren’t getting any if you don’t come now.”

The older boys looked at each other. Ian shrugged, then he turned and took off toward the docks. Peter glanced at Sarah, as though weighing the idea of going without a delicious meal, then hurried after his brother. The two youngest children kicked. “We wanna go too!”

Sarah firmly held their arms. “You’ll fall into the river and drown, then where will I be?” she growled over their screaming. “Settle down and come along.”

When the trio reached home, the need to heat yesterday’s stew and mix up a batch of baking powder biscuits temporarily pushed Sarah’s grief to the back of her mind. But as she pulled the hot pan from the small, black beast of a cook stove, the familiar odor of her mother’s best biscuits wafted on the air and set Sarah to crying again.

She dropped the pan on the top of the stove, hastily dished up the stew, and placed the food before the two hungry children. They instantly set to eating with fingers and spoons. “You’re welcome,” Sarah muttered past the hard lump in her throat. She untied her apron, hung it on a nail, and headed for the ladder to the loft she shared with Ellie and the boys. A thin blanket hanging from a rope separated the attic into two rooms.

Sarah pushed past the flimsy partition and flung herself down on her cornhusk mattress, sobbing. Why had God taken Mama and the newborn baby? When no more tears came, Sarah rolled over and stared at the attic ceiling. The pine boards were old and warped. Here and there a chink of sunlight showed through the tarpaper and rough shake roof. Was there any hope it would be repaired before fall?

Hardly. Gus Stoddard was not long on work. He could usually be found doing the least strenuous job for the most money. Gambling figured highly into his income opportunities, but Sarah knew he lost far more than he won.

She only had to look around the cramped shack she called home and count the number of times she mended britches and lowered hems to figure out Gus was just as poor a gambler as he was at any honest venture. When things got too lean, he’d find work on the docks long enough to tide them over for a few weeks.

“Oh, God!” Sarah cried out to the ceiling. “Why did you let Mama die? How will I get along without her?” A vision of what lay ahead sent a cold chill into the girl’s aching heart. Virginia had named her only daughter Sarah Joy, but what little joy Sarah had known during the past three years was buried in a lonely grave.

Thinking about her mother’s death plunged Sarah into the past—to the tragic death of her beloved father five years before. The illness had transformed the strong-but-gentle Scandinavian giant into a thin, pale shadow of his former self.

They struggled watching their once-productive farm slowly deteriorate when John Anderson could no longer work it. The final hours of a wonderful husband and father were agonizing to see. Although he had no fear of death, John mourned for his family, who would soon be left alone in the world. Seeing him so had wrenched Sarah’s heart, but not like this most recent, terrible loss. Now she was alone. Alone with . . .

“Why did you have to marry that horrible Gus Stoddard?” she sobbed. “We were getting along all right. You, Seth, and me.”

Yet Sarah knew it wasn’t true. Her brother Seth had worked hard, but he couldn’t make the farm pay. Forced to sell Pleasant Acres, they relocated to Saint Louis, but every day was a struggle.

A year later, Virginia Anderson informed her eighteen-year-old son and fifteen-year-old daughter that she was remarrying. “He’s a widower,” she said. “A kind, God-fearing Christian man I met at a church social. He has four motherless children. The youngest is only two years old. Mr. Stoddard is anxious to share his home with a woman who will treat his children as her own. In exchange, he will make a good husband and provide a home for us.”

Now Sarah snorted. “A good husband?” She pulled herself to a sitting position on her bed, clenched her fists, and slammed them onto her thin, uncomfortable mattress. Gus Stoddard had been desperate for a woman, all right. A woman who would do all the work without even a thank-you. A woman who would care for his unruly, ill-behaved children and go for days wondering when her new husband would return from his many “business” deals. “Translation,” Sarah muttered, “his gambling and drinking binges. We were better off starving to death by ourselves.”

She closed her eyes and tried to shove the pain of the last three years from her mind. “It’s over. No point in digging up old memories. They should stay buried. I’ve got enough trouble right now without borrowing from the past.”

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

The verse from Matthew’s Gospel popped into Sarah’s head, but it did little to quiet her anxiety. She knew the verse referred to worrying about tomorrow, but she had a feeling that God was also trying to tell her to let the past take care of itself.

No use. Memories flooded her troubled mind. Sarah could do nothing to stop them. At last she gave in and relived the heart-wrenching weeks that had followed her mother’s marriage to Gus.